Many mysteries surround Jacopone but maybe the greatest mystery concerns one of medieval Europe’s most popular religious hymns, the Stabat Mater.  Despite its great popularity, we don’t know for certain who wrote it.  Various suggestions have been made over the centuries, summarised by Desmond Fisher (in his 2015 book on the subject) as “three Popes, three Saints and one layman”.  The layman is Jacopone. 

Historically, Jacopone was widely accepted as the author and Fisher also concluded that:

It is this combination of conjecture and internal evidence that convinces me that Jacopone was the poem’s author.  The experts may not accept it as conclusive.  But I feel justified in claiming it to be more convincing than any of the claims that have been advanced on behalf of the six saints and Popes that have been mentioned in this context.

It’s appropriate that the most recent defence of Jacopone’s authorship should be by an Irish writer (Fisher), since the earliest explicit claim of Jacopone’s authorship was also by an Irish writer.  This was Luke Wadding, the great historian of the Franciscan Order, writing c.1650.  However, various objections have been raised to Jacopone as author of the Stabat Mater.

Contemporary evidence

The main objection is the lack of contemporary evidence recording Jacopone as the author.  But since there is no contemporary evidence for any possible author, this cannot be used to rule out Jacopone.  In fact, the absence of evidence may actually support Jacopone as the author.  If the Stabat Mater was written by a Pope (such as Innocent III) or a great saint (such as Bernard of Clairvaux or Bonaventure), it would certainly be difficult to explain why no record of this survives.  But in Jacopone’s case a lack of evidence is understandable, because it seems that in the centuries after his death there was a deliberate effort to destroy every trace of the man behind the poetry.  Don Mario Pericoli, a priest and passionate researcher into the history of Todi, devoted much of his life to searching for information about Jacopone but concluded that any evidence, whether in church archives in Todi or in the Vatican, had been destroyed:

Language

Another argument against Jacopone is that Stabat Mater is in Latin, whereas Jacopone wrote his laudi in the local Umbrian vernacular.  The obvious response to this is that the Stabat Mater is not a laude – it is a more formal liturgical hymn, for which Latin was obviously appropriate in an age when all liturgies were in Latin.  There’s no doubt that Jacopone, with his legal background, could write in Latin and in fact, a number of surviving Latin works are accepted as written by him.  Although these are prose rather than poetry, it is clear that Jacopone was quite capable of writing poetry in Latin, if he had wished to do so.

Literary style

Some writers reject Jacopone on the basis that the Stabat Mater is different, in literary style and tone, to the laudi.  This argument focuses particularly on Jacopone’s most famous laude, Donna de Paradiso, which deals with precisely the same theme as the Stabat Mater – the suffering of Mary at the crucifixion of Jesus.  Judgements such as these are inevitably subjective, leading to disagreement among literary critics.  Some (including Fisher) in fact view Donna de Paradiso as strong evidence that Jacopone also wrote Stabat Mater.  Others see it as evidence that he did not, because Donna de Paradiso adopts a different perspective than Stabat Mater.  Undoubtedly, these are very different poems:  one was a laude, to be performed freely in the vernacular, while the other was a hymn to be sung in the Latin liturgies of the Church.  Donna de Paradiso presents Mary’s pain in dramatic form, while Stabat Mater goes beyond this to reflect on our pain and our compassion for the Mother and, ultimately, for her Son.  But to suggest, therefore, that they cannot have the same author is simplistic and reductionist, taking no account of the complexity of thought that all great writers possess.  In fact, as we discuss here, there are definite and distinctive similarities in the perspectives and settings of the two poems.

Date

The presence of the Stabat Mater in a late 13th-century liturgical manuscript from Bologna has been interpreted as proof that it was in use at a date too early to allow for Jacopone to have written it.  But while the Bologna manuscript as a whole dates to the late 13th century, the section containing the Stabat Mater is a later addition, dated to around 1325.  That extra 30-40 years makes a significant difference.  Fisher suggests that Jacopone may have composed the Stabat Mater in the 1280s, at the request of his Franciscan superiors.  Alternatively, it may have been written when Jacopone spent time in Rome c.1290, during the papacy of the first Franciscan Pope, Nicholas IV, who may have encouraged the great Franciscan poet to compose a hymn with a typically Franciscan theme.  This can only be speculation but if Jacopone composed Stabat Mater in the 1280s or early 1290s – especially if this was done with Papal support – then it is perfectly possible that it could have been known and used in Bologna by c.1325.  The Bologna manuscript does not prove that Jacopone did not write Stabat Mater.

Tradition

When Luke Wadding wrote in c.1650 that Jacopone was the author of the Stabat Mater, he didn’t cite his sources.  But undoubtedly, he was drawing on longstanding Franciscan tradition and this must be treated with respect, since most writers – even many who don’t necessarily accept Jacopone as the author – agree that Stabat Mater is typically Franciscan in its inspiration and must have been written by a Franciscan.  But the tradition of Jacopone’s authorship is actually much earlier than Wadding, even if the evidence is implicit rather than explicit.  Even though it is not a laude, Stabat Mater is included in collections of Jacopone’s laudi in several manuscripts, dating at least as early as the 15th century.  The very early printed edition of the laudi, published in Brescia in 1495, also includes Stabat Mater – possibly the first time it was printed.  The clear implication of including Stabat Mater with the laudi was that it, too, was written by Jacopone.  This doesn’t prove that he actually was the author, but it is evidence of an early and longstanding tradition that must be taken seriously.

Conclusion

Unless new evidence is discovered, it may never be possible to prove who wrote the Stabat Mater.  What we can say is that the most widespread and most longstanding tradition regards Jacopone as the author – and that this tradition must be treated very seriously, unless there is evidence to disprove it.  In fact, however, there is no conclusive evidence against Jacopone as author.  At the very least, therefore, we can say that of all the individuals who have been suggested as the author of the Stabat Mater, Jacopone remains by far the most likely. There is no other credible candidate.